Paul Barber writes a rather magnificent letter to the FL re: Player's failings

Dear All

I wrote earlier today to my colleagues Shaun Harvey and Richard Heaselgrave at The Football League to warn them in advance that we would be sending a formal complaint to Perform and to the Football League concerning our ongoing unsatisfactory experience with Seagulls Player and Perform.

For our match at Middlesbrough yesterday, we had yet more poor service from Perform, with another unreliable commentary stream via Seagulls Player for the ENTIRE 90 minutes including silence for most of the second half, a period which also saw us score the only goal of the game. I'm sure you will agree that this is far from acceptable.

Our fans are paying for a product, and they are simply not getting it. We know match commentary is one of the main reasons many fans sign up to Player and, in this day and age, it is a basic level of service that should be very easy to provide. Furthermore we also appreciate fans are investing time to listen, with some even getting up in the middle of the night, depending on their time zones.

The simple fact is that the service should work in a reliable way. That has not happened for months, even years, and it is no longer acceptable to us. It's totally unfair that our club and our brand are now being damaged by persistent problems and failures brought about by the up reliability of Perform's service. This will soon - if it hasn't happened already - start to have a material financial effect as subscriptions are cancelled.

Indeed, in this regard, please could you supply numbers of Seagulls Player subscribers who've cancelled their services with FLi/Perform this season at your earliest convenience. To demonstrate the issues we are facing, I would like to report this number accurately to our Board at our December meeting which takes place all day tomorrow (Monday 16 December).

At recent games v Wigan, and yesterday v Middlesbrough, our media team have been unable to report on large periods of the game (via seagulls.co.uk and twitter) as they've been trying to rectify commentary issues instead of concentrating on the jobs we actually pay them to do. Perform should be taking responsibility for this - not our staff!

Furthermore, the media team and I - as well as other areas of our club - are dealing with an increasing number of complaints from irate supporters who are coming direct to the club via email, twitter and other methods in increasing numbers. You may wish to check our supporter message boards for some very direct and forthright feedback on Perform and the Player service.

I now think it's very important that current subscribers receive some form of uniform financial gesture from FLi/Perform as compensation. I would suggest that, as a minimum, all Seagulls Player subscribers receive the second half of the season for free. In fact, you may also wish to consider, as a further gesture of goodwill - which badly needs restoring - refunding this season's subscriptions in full.

After continued problems this season, just over two weeks ago we tested the system over an entire day, streaming direct from BBC Sussex and the stream worked perfectly. Perform accepted this. The stream worked well for the last three matches, and it seemed as if things were going well.

Pre-match our media team checked the stream from Middlesbrough and it was running. Then in the first half they discovered the stream was dropping out intermittently. Calls were made to Perform to rectify the situation - but the tech team, as has happened many times previously, were unable to offer an explanation for the issues. Eventually, the feed dropped completely. The media then called the BBC and asked them to redial in, and despite several attempts, nothing happened

Finally - after three further calls to Perform - the team were given a new number to pass onto the BBC to dial, and the audio came back for the final four minutes. There were still a couple of intermittent drops in coverage, but again Perform's tech team couldn't tell the media team whether this was an issue on the feed coming in, or whether it's an issue on the Player feed.

Perform are simply NOT delivering the service they're employed by FLi to provide. It is ridiculous that nobody at Perform is checking the incoming and outgoing feeds for quality or reliability; and that our staff have to call Perform to flag problems. Surely alarm bells should be ringing if the stream is not 100%?

It isn't acceptable to expect our media team (or supporters) to be expected to flag up and deal with these problems. Perform should be on top of them, or they should not arise. Furthermore, it is not acceptable for our club's directors, media and customer service staff to be spending huge amounts of time on a match day dealing with irate supporters who have paid for a service they are not receiving. Again, this is Perform's responsibility.

Until someone at Perform actually takes ownership of the specific problem of the intermittent commentary, this issue will never be solved. Therefore I would ask that somebody at FLi and at Perform takes the time to check out match commentary moving forward and provides us with a report on each game: quality of stream, problems, reasons, downtime etc.

I haven't yet touched on the financial impact for our club. In the last quarter we earned XXX from Player subs, plus XXX in syndication (linked to subscriber numbers). We feel this number should actually be much higher, not least when you consider our home attendances continue to be the best in the league. But the poor reputation of Seagulls Player is restricting us. In this Financial Fair Play era when every penny of revenue matters more than ever before, we simply cannot continue to accept our club being penalised in this way and neither can we accept our fans being continually let down.

I look forward to your urgent comments on this matter, to hearing your plan to rectify this situation, and your thoughts on how our supporters will be compensated.

Regards, Paul

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Ernest said:

Top stuff, he is doing a great job for the club

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Hyperion said:

Out of interest, what is the deal on this Template FL website?

Are we not allowed to say stuff it and do our own thing regarding the website and Seagulls Player?

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